Physiologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have created a new interdepartmental Ph.D. program (IDP) in Molecular, Cellular, & Integrative Physiology that is designed to provide an educational and research program for predoctoral students that will enable those students to meet new challenges in biomedical and life science research. In the view of the training faculty, there is an important and growing need for biomedical researchers who are trained to design and perform cellular and molecular manipulations that can be interpreted in the complex, in vivo, physiological environment. The goal of this program is to help to meet that need. A great strength of this program is that it is founded upon the established abilities of the training faculty to perform state-of-the-art research in physiology that integrates molecular, cellular and systemic function. These participating faculty members have been drawn from the pool of UCLA physiologists who have been ranked by the National Research Council as fourth in the nation for their quality in the discipline of Physiology. Furthermore, the training faculty has a long history of successful training of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students who have continued in their own successful scientific careers. The program has been strengthened recently by a redesigned curriculum in which integrative approaches to modem, physiological research have been emphasized. The program has also been strengthened by substantial new resources provided by the University to build further the training program in this discipline. In this application, funding is requested for 4 NRSA supported traineeships per year. This support will be provided to the most highly-qualified predoctoral students early in their graduate training, so that they can complete research rotations, graduate coursework and seminars in Molecular, Cellular, & Integrative Physiology, and begin the development of their thesis research. Trainees will be recruited nationally and be selected for the program if they have demonstrated high academic achievement, experience in research, and high promise for a successful future in research and teaching in biomedical or life science research.